Anything But Sheep
by Jo-Anne Rosen
I locked all our doors and told everyone to stay inside.
Mobs were roaming the streets. The moment they learned the emperor had surrendered and the war they’d jubilantly supported just the other day was lost, lickety-split, the citizens of Paris erected barricades and roared for blood.
Agnes wanted to pack up and leave at once. “Why couldn’t you simply have done your job and come home?” she asked. “You got much too close to them. Everyone knows who you are.”
“It’s why we have a beautiful home right across the street from the Bois de Boulogne,” I reminded her.
“We could just as well have a beautiful home in Philadelphia.”
“Well, my dear,” I drawled, “rest assured, this Yankee Doodle dentist won’t be seeing any patients today.”
I smiled, showing all my teeth, but Agnes was not amused. She retreated upstairs to her private suite with its wide view of Avenue de l’Impératrice and the oak forest she dearly loved to promenade in. Nothing in Philadelphia could compare to the Bois, and she knew it.
“Is it another revolution, Papa?” my boy asked eagerly. I dragged him from the window overlooking the street.
The bell clanged insistently directly below us, and Arthur scampered back to the window. “Two ladies,” he reported. “Mademoiselles in distress.”
The bell kept clanging. I looked out, and seeing only two feathered chapeaux and billowing, black skirts, no wild-eyed sans-culottes, I went downstairs and unlocked the door.
“Dr. Evans, thank God you are here.”
I’d know that low-pitched voice anywhere. Empress Eugénie, pale face barely visible under a thick veil and black derby bonnet. “You’re my only friend, Thomas. Everyone else has vanished.”
The younger woman was carrying a pannier with a few hastily packed possessions. I learned they had fled the Tuileries on foot. Went out one door while howling ruffians came in the other. They fled through the Louvre. Who would think to look for a fugitive empress in an art gallery?
Mlle. Lebreton hailed a one-horse cab that crawled through the crowded streets. “Death to the Spanish whore! To the guillotine!” screamed the good people of Paris. “Long live the third republic!” At houses where the two women stopped, no one was home, or they were denied entrance.
I took them into the library and shut the louvers. Agnes came downstairs again when she heard the clamor, and I stepped into the hallway to ask her to make our guests comfortable.
“You shouldn’t have let her in,” she hissed, hands on hips. “You’re putting our lives at risk.”
“If we don’t help her escape, she’s as good as dead. How can we do otherwise?”
Our boy peered over the banister, wide-eyed and curious. Agnes glanced up at him. “Perhaps you’re right,” she sighed.
“Think of it as another extraction.” I clicked my teeth together and winked.
“Oh Tom!” She rolled her eyes and went into the salon and greeted Eugénie cordially but did not curtsey.
Of course, she knew better than to tell our maid that she was serving coffee and sandwiches to the woman behind the throne. Everyone blamed the empress for the war with Prussia. Even I, who had long admired her (and her small, straight teeth), had to admit she was complicit.
“You will need to leave France at once,” I told Her Majesty, after the serving girl had returned to the kitchen.
“I wanted to stay in the palace,” Eugénie said. “I wouldn’t have cared if they killed me.” She didn’t blink an eye.
“Why would you say that?” I glanced at Agnes, who put a hand over her mouth, clearly distressed.
“An emperor should not surrender. An empress should not flee. It is better to be dead.”
Silence while my heart began to harden. How had the revolutionary experiment declined to this deadly impasse, yet again? I recalled Eugénie’s obsession with Marie Antoinette, who no doubt would have preferred flight to death, given the opportunity. I stared at her, at a loss for words.
Then her lovely violet eyes filled with tears, and I softened.
“But my staying would put the lives of my attendants and friends in danger. And what if I had been taken prisoner and executed? Think of the violence that would break out.” She shuddered. “Another Terror. Enough blood has been shed already.”
“I agree,” I said. “Now, let’s agree on a plan to whisk you out of here, pronto.”
* * *
My plan depended upon the cooperation of a friend with a yacht in Deauville, whom I dared not telegraph in advance, but I said nothing of this to empress or wife. I asked our coachman to prepare the carriage for a trip in the morning. Agnes was charged with finding simpler costumes for the two ladies, who would be disguised as my patient and nurse, should anyone inquire. We all had the requisite paperwork to enter England.
That night, we climbed into bed exhausted but couldn’t fall asleep right away. Agnes didn’t complain again about my attachment to the imperial court. What good would that do now? She knew it had never been a deliberate strategy on my part but had happened naturally, little by little. I’m good at what I do, people seem to like me (or they like my laughing gas), the emperor swore he couldn’t get along without me, and now I’m the most successful dental surgeon in Europe, privy to the machinations of crowned heads and owner of half the real estate around the Bois de Boulogne.
I told Agnes she’d been right. There was no point in sticking around waiting to see if rocks came crashing through our windows. We agreed it would be best if we all left Paris together the next day.
“It’s like living in a lunatic asylum,” she said.
“Are you frightened?”
“Yes, aren’t you?”
“I can’t afford that luxury,” I told her. “We’re going to be fine; you’ll see.”
* * *
By morning we had assembled some necessities and crowded into our enclosed landau. Eugénie regarded our boy wistfully. He, in turn, was awestruck by her beauty and regal bearing. When she spoke to him, he blushed.
“Will you be a soldier when you grow up?” she asked.
“Oh no, madame,” he said proudly. “I am going to be a dentist.”
She laughed and then sighed. I knew she was thinking of the Prince Imperial, who was a few years older than Arthur and might be locked up with his father in some Prussian fortress. Or worse.
In fact, they somewhat resembled each other, Arthur and Prince Louis, and with good reason. They had the same father, though I doubt Eugénie knew that. My boy was another of Napoleon III’s illegitimate offspring, but he was as American as I. We had taken him in as an infant and raised him as our own. Now he was my apprentice.
* * *
We arrived at the gates of the city where armed citizen sentries were perusing outgoing and incoming traffic. Even attired in a drab, high-necked frock, Eugénie looked queenly. Her face was veiled, but to be safe, I gave her a newspaper and she opened it across her face. A guard peered into the carriage and demanded our traveling papers, which I quickly produced. Arthur began to whistle “La Marseillaise” under his breath until I elbowed him into silence. None of us said another word.
“On you go, American friends!” The guard grinned and waved us through.
A collective sigh of relief et voilà, we were on our way. The mood in the carriage lightened as we trotted along the highway. Off in the distance we saw the smoke plume of a passenger train on its way north from Paris. It would have been much faster but too risky to take the train. We rode through quiet villages without incident where it seemed no one had any idea that the regime had been overturned, a war lost, the emperor imprisoned, and the regent empress deposed.
Until we reached a crossroads town where there was a military post and paused to refresh the horses and stretch our legs. In the town square a uniformed officer was shouting at a thin, ill-clothed young man who seemed frozen in place, bewildered. A few townsfolk had gathered around but kept their distance. The officer was large and burly, his face enflamed, likely by alcohol. As we watched, he grabbed the young fellow and slapped him hard across the face.
That was too much for Eugénie. To my dismay, she strode into the square, one arm outstretched, shaking her fist. “Stop! I command you to stop!” she shouted. The officer paid her no mind. He spat on the boy and hit him again.
A few onlookers turned and stared at her. For a small woman she had, when need be, a mighty voice. “I am the Empress and I command you to stop!” she roared. In a flash I was by her side with one protective arm around her shoulder. With the other I gestured to the crowd that this was a mad woman. I tapped my head and rolled my eyes and quickly steered her back to the carriage.
By then she realized her error and covered her face with both hands. She was trembling, whether from anger or fear wasn’t clear. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I forgot everything but his beastly cruelty.”
I was not surprised by her impulsive kindness; I’d witnessed it often before. But I could see that Agnes was appalled. Once again Eugénie had put us all in a potentially dangerous position. Arthur was enchanted. Later he would tell me he considered her the epitome of queenliness, and he would worship her all his life.
That night we stayed in a small, grim hotel in Rivière-Thibouville, and by the next afternoon were at last in Deauville. The docks were swarming with refugees. There were not enough ships for all those desiring to escape.
The water in the Channel was steel gray and eerily calm, and clouds roiled the sky. At the ferry station, citizen gendarmes walked up and down looking for anyone or anything suspicious.
I spotted the sloop Gazelle anchored at its usual dock with its boarding ramp locked and had to clamber up a rope ladder when no one responded to my calls.
Sir John Burgoyne, now rather long in the tooth, considered my confidential request uneasily, while my charges waited in the carriage. He did not want to be involved, having endured enough strife in his long military career.
“It simply isn’t possible,” he informed me gruffly. “A storm is brewing at sea as well as in the body politic.”
It was Lady Burgoyne who persuaded her husband to ferry us across the Channel that night. She peered over the rail at the carriage, caught a glimpse of the former empress, curtsied deeply and set to work on the old fellow.
I was grateful not only for her intercession but also her steady comfort through a long and terrifying voyage in gale winds. The ship rocked in sudden, violent swells, and all the women but Lady B were dreadfully sick. My boy and I had good sea legs and did what we could to help them. Arthur knelt like a fairytale prince with a golden bowl before three queens, except that it was a tin bucket. The ship might well have sunk, as did others in that storm, but the lad was too young to sense the gravity of our situation. He was having a marvelous time.
Mlle. Lebreton was on her knees all night praying to her rosary in between spells of nausea. Eugénie took out a locket with the Prince Imperial’s miniature in it and held it to her chest. She put her head on Agnes’ shoulder and wept.
“He is still half-child,” she murmured. “But oh, how he desires glory.”
* * *
The next day, safely ensconced in a quiet English town by the sea, we met for breakfast in the hotel’s dining room. Agnes inquired gently if Eugénie had slept well.
She shook her head no. “I dreamt all night that Paris was burning.”
It just might, I thought, and wondered uneasily if dreams could forecast disaster yet to come.
Agnes frowned. “How implacable are the French republicans. So full of hatred and cruelty. They would’ve torn you to pieces, milady, and torched your remains.”
I reminded her of our own republic’s recent bloody conflict. “Our country was very nearly torn to pieces, too,” I said. “Hatred and cruelty are not the sole provenance of the French.”
“Oh Tom, it’s not the same.”
Eugénie lifted her chin. She wasn’t a quitter. She assured us, once reunited with her husband and son, she would come up with a new strategy. “God willing, they are both safe.” Her hands, holding a porcelain teacup, trembled, and she put the cup carefully back in its saucer. She kept looking over at Arthur, who was staring at the table or the floor.
I hesitated before delivering my opinion.
“I don’t believe the empire will be restored again, madame. All of this discord and regime change, these are the growing pains of a democracy. Now is the time for France to grow up and become a true republic.”
The women looked at me, startled.
No more fairytale kings and queens, I thought but did not say. I would cheerfully be a dentist for the free and enfranchised citizens of France. Provided they could pay me.
“But the Prince Imperial? What of my son’s legacy?” Alarmed, Eugénie put a protective hand over the locket. Though she did not always heed my advice, she respected my opinion.
Now her pale face darkened, shadowed by loss. “He is meant to be the strong and wise shepherd of his people,” she declared passionately.
“Prince Louis will grow up, too,” I assured her. “He can be a strong and wise leader in the third République Français.”
She waved a hand, as if to swat away an annoying idea. And then she reconsidered and smiled knowingly at me. She must have been thinking, Prince-Président Louis. And of course, envisioning yet another coup, followed by another, far, far better empire, an empire plus parfait. “A shepherd,” she repeated, firmly. “For those squabbling children, the citizens of France. They require a firm hand.”
I suspected our prince, burdened with so implacable a legacy, might not be well-suited for republicanism. The citizens of France were anything but sheep.
Young Arthur was listening and pretending not to, his head lowered over a plate of sausage and eggs. How different was his destiny.
About the author
Jo-Anne Rosen’s fiction has appeared in three dozen journals and anthologies, including The Florida Review, The Summerset Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Copperfield Review, and Big City Lit, and has received a Pushcart nomination. She is a book designer living in Petaluma, California. Since 2010 she has published Wordrunner eChapbooks, an online hybrid chapbook/journal (at https://echapbook.com/) and co-edited the Sonoma County Literary Update (https://socolitupdate.com/). What They Don’t Know (2015) is her first fiction collection. See www.joannerosen.us for more information.
About the illustration
The illustration is "Eugenie, Empress of the French", photograph 1856 by Gustave Le Gray. In the public domain.